The effects of international migration on male unemployment in Malaysia

In Malaysia, male employment plays an important role in families as they are breadwinners. However, an increase in international migrants can cause them to be unemployed. Other than that, the number of male employment is higher than the number of female employment. In addition, the number of international migrants also exhibit an increasing trend. This situation has alarmed economists and policymakers. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of international migration on male unemployment in Malaysia from 1982 to 2015. The Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) technique was employed and the results show that international migrants do not harm the labour force in Malaysia in the long run. This is because Malaysia needs foreign workers in some crucial sectors such as agriculture and construction. However, the results of the causality test reveal that migration can influence male unemployment in the short run. Therefore, it is imperative for policymakers to introduce policies to alleviate the problem of male unemployment, such as controlling the number of permits for foreign workers to work in the sectors that are dominated by local male workers